Nine times out of ten, one person in the relationship reaches out to me first. Not both. One partner has been thinking about it for ..... Read more...

I had a client tell me recently that he avoids calling his own grandparents — people he loves more than almost anyone — and he ..... Read more...

When I was 13, my parents were living in Tonga. They decided the best school for me was in Wellington, New Zealand. So I was ..... Read more...

“Where are you from?” For most people it’s small talk. For me it has always been a small trapdoor. I can feel myself working out ..... Read more...

A client of mine — sharp, capable, good at his job — told me something that stops a lot of people in their tracks when ..... Read more...

A couple sat in my office recently, both of them tired. Tired of the fight, and tired of having to explain, again, why the fight ..... Read more...

Moving abroad together sounds like an adventure. And it often is — for a while. New city, new food, a shared sense of starting fresh. ..... Read more...

This is the question that won’t leave you alone. Not the practical questions — what happens now, who knows, what do we tell the kids. ..... Read more...

This is probably the first question you’ve typed into Google since finding out. So let me answer it directly, without softening it or spinning it. ..... Read more...

So you’ve landed in Switzerland. Maybe it’s been a few months, maybe a couple of years. Life is objectively fine — good job, nice apartment, ..... Read more...

Maybe you found the messages. Maybe they told you. Maybe you just knew, and then you asked, and now you can’t unknow it. Whatever happened ..... Read more...

Couples ask me this in the first 20 minutes of a first session, often. It’s usually said with a kind of exhausted laugh. Like they ..... Read more...

Not everyone gets to know their inner world by sitting quietly with their eyes closed. Some people think best while walking. Some while talking. Some ..... Read more...

Many people arrive at therapy having already done a great deal of thinking about themselves. They can describe their patterns with precision. They understand, intellectually, ..... Read more...

You’re the one who notices what everyone needs before they’ve asked. You smooth things over before they become conflicts. You say yes when you mean ..... Read more...

Not the tired that a good weekend fixes. Not the tired that comes from a busy week and lifts by Sunday afternoon. The tired I’m ..... Read more...

You moved abroad together. Same decision, same flight, same front door. But somewhere along the way, you ended up in completely different experiences. One of ..... Read more...

There’s a particular kind of exhausting that comes from being anxious in a relationship. Not anxious about the big things — the obvious problems you ..... Read more...

You know the one. The argument has a hundred different starting points — the way the dishes were left, a comment about money, something that ..... Read more...

There’s a moment that happens in good therapy — and sometimes in life — where something shifts. Instead of fighting an uncomfortable feeling, or trying ..... Read more...

It’s not that anything dramatic happened. There’s no affair, no betrayal, no single moment you could point to and say that’s where it went wrong. ..... Read more...

The Guardian ran a piece this week that stopped me in my tracks. Five people sharing what it really feels like to move countries for ..... Read more...

You know the one. It might be with your co-founder — a dynamic that’s been off for months, something neither of you has named. It ..... Read more...

You know what you’re doing. That’s the maddening part. You can see yourself taking over the meeting when you said you’d listen. You watch yourself ..... Read more...